Tag Archives for random

“The Sound of Music” Winner

Hooray! I’m on my way to Baltimore, but I wanted to quickly let the ticket winner know that she and her family have 4 tickets to opening night of Pittsburgh CLO’s “The Sound of Music” on Tuesday, July 19!

Kathleen Schultz, come on down!
(I’ll email you with details on your tickets.)

Tickets are still available online (including half price for kids under 13) so hopefully the rest of you will get a chance to see the show as well. Give me a holler if you’re going Friday night – that’s when Avi and I will be there.

Open letter

I’m a little busy. Okay, a lot. I’m sorry. In a little over a week I’ll be done with our biggest event of the year and maybe we can hang out then? But then I go to LA, then it’s commencement, then I go to NYC…so I’ll catch you sometime in June? But not July, because then I’m going to Baltimore…

Whew.

It’s really not that bad. I wouldn’t be writing this if I couldn’t spare five minutes (Although I am doing so at work. On Saturday. At 7pm. So there you go.) and for the most part things are under control. Wonderfully awesome people (and lots of regular people too!) will be visiting in fewer days than I can count on one hand, and events we’ve been working on for months will be in full swing by Friday. It’s an exciting kind of exhaustion, but I definitely had a holy-moly-how-is-this-going-to-come-together moment earlier this morning. And yesterday. And probably tomorrow, too.

#ITSFINE

So in the meantime, text me if you need anything, come visit me at Spring Carnival & Reunion Weekend if you’re in town and don’t forget to tell me your favorite beer to win VIP tickets to The Big Tap In.

Oh, and cross your fingers for some sunshine next weekend, okay?

Anarchy in the LR

My poor little MacBook has taken its share of physical and verbal abuses lately. The keyboard case is cracked again. The battery won’t hold a charge and needs to be replaced. This took me at least two weeks to figure out, since I thought at first it was just that I had tried to used the fancy MacBook Pro charger and my little MacBook was rebelling. Turns out 600+ cycles is more than reasonable for a single battery. Just need to suck it up and get a new one.

As you might expect, this has had a negative impact on my evening computer consumption. I’ve been lucky enough to leave my work laptop at work (novel concept) much of the time recently, since I’ve basically been on campus for a month. Total laziness gets in the way of me getting out the MacBook when I get home – you know, since I have to deal with CORDS and PLUGS and OMG THIS COMPUTER ISN’T PORTABLE ANYMORE. (My life, it is tough.)

The ultimate indignity came yesterday afternoon, when I was doing a little guest lecture spot for David‘s Studiocraft II class. I accidentally grabbed the MacBook Pro monitor connector (so I could connect to the projector) instead of the connector for my MacBook. When we called the CCon for assistance (and the correct connector), he told me my three and a half year old machine was too old. I was totally shamed. All you college seniors who bought your laptops in 2007, I hope you don’t ever need to do a presentation on campus.

When I came downstairs this morning, I found this:

Might not seem like much in the way of chaos, but look closer: toybox (read: computer storage box) left open, boxes removed, contents rifled, cords pulled out, lamp askew. Okay, maybe the lamp is an outlier. But clearly, I know what happened here.

Someone was looking for the MacBook Pro monitor connector.

Oops.

Small victories

I had an “old-Andrea” type of morning. Despite getting 8+ hours of sleep, I awoke exhausted, snoozing long enough to make me hurried but not long enough to make me late. I forgot: coat, notebook, bag, lunch, earrings and card (as in greeting, not bank).

Several of those things were needed – but not necessary – for a meeting this afternoon, so I took a chance and ran home at lunch.

In addition to acquiring all forgotten items, I also quickly made a delicious grilled cheese sandwich with spinach and tomatoes on whole wheat bread and washed it down with CSA apple cider.

All this, and I made it back in forty minutes. Whew.

Torn

I never write about politics. I’m not qualified to do so, and few things frustrate me more than talking heads (or in this case, writing fingers) prattling on about an issue without all the facts or context. But (and you knew that was coming, right?) I am so overwhelmed and depressed and disappointed and shocked by the political goings on these days. No matter how much I want to shove my fingers in my ears and hum loudly to myself, I can’t ignore what I read. And I can’t stop reading it, either.

It surprises me how ill-equipped I am to deal with all the hate in the world. When did I become so naive? I used to be able to debate with the best of them, confident that I could make you see my perspective if not change your mind. Goodness knows my mind wasn’t going to change, of course. I thought I was a bleeding heart liberal long before I really understood what that meant.

But I’ve mellowed. Not necessarily in belief, but absolutely in my need to share it with you. And what seems to have replaced the furvor folly of my youth is resignation, exhaustion and deep, deep sadness.

My friend Laura says, “Be Kind. No Exceptions.” It’s a simple mantra that has garnered a lot of attention lately. I’m just not convinced that the right people are getting the message. Every time I read the news it’s another example of hateful vitriol and inexcusable behavior coming from individuals in prominent leadership positions at all levels. There’s no such thing as “agree to disagree” anymore;  just “you’re wrong, and I hate you for it.”

It’s unbearable. And disrespectful. If our leaders can’t treat one another with common decency, how can we believe they have any respect for their constituents?

So I’m considering enforcing a personal moratorium on news updates until after the mid-term elections. I’ll do my research now so I can be an informed voter, but then I’ll stop reading. I’ll go straight to the dream real estate section of the New York Times. I’ll skip the political articles in The New Yorker. I’ll avoid Wait, Wait like the plague. I’ll remove all other news sources from my various feeds.

Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just keep reading and hoping someone up there gets the message. Soon.

In which I admit defeat

Clearly, NaBloPoMo isn’t really going to happen this month. That is fine. I’ll pick up where I left off and do the best I can. I know none of you were really holding me to it, anyway. I just like to be ambitious. At the worst possible time.

PodCamp Pittsburgh5 isn’t going happen for me this month, either. That’s less fine, but I’ll get over it. We gifted away my VIP attendance last night (@n3yne was the lucky winner), so now it is officially official that I won’t be there. I’ll miss you guys.

Work is a lot. Home is a lot. Neither are bad, just a lot. Maybe even ALOT (which is better than us at everything).

Hrm. This sounds down-er than I am. I’m really fine, just adjusting to, well, a lot. And maybe admitting to myself that I can’t actually do *everything* anymore.

I guess that’s not defeat, that’s reality.

Things you don’t expect to find when you order the mussels…

Yes, that is a starfish. No, it should never have been brought to our table like that.*

We recently celebrated new jobs via raw oysters and brunch. (Not consumed at the same meal. Duh.) At the restaurant* where we had the oysters, we also had an order of mussels. This little guy came along inside one of the last ones in the bowl.

I know from Avi’s library beach books that starfish eat mussels and other bivalves by forcing open the shell and sucking up the animal inside. I would imagine that is not the most pleasant way to go, since the same library book also compared starfish to snails in terms of speed. Little did this particular starfish know that the delicious mussel he (she? it?) was slowly chowing down on would be his (hers? its?) last.

I vacillated between fascinated and horrified. We didn’t let the server know, but we did place the shell on the top of the bowl so maybe someone noticed it before it was thrown out. In hindsight, I think not making a scene was the right choice.

*You probably want to know where we were, right? Sigh. The good news is it wasn’t a locally-owned place. We were going to go to the Original Fish Market downtown, but we ended up at Mitchell’s in the Waterfront instead. I got drunk on excellent mojitos and elderflower martinis and cucumber collinses. But I don’t think we’ll be going back again any time soon.